The Role of Women in Islam

Throughout the Muslim world there are different representations of women as they appear in Islam. Some Muslim countries allow for women to hold professional positions such as judges and parliamentary members. In these countries women can drive cars and are attending universities at higher rates than men, and they even have the right to vote, contrary to the image that most of the Western world has. The West sees more of the harsher countries when it comes to women’s rights, such as places that are sexually segregated and require that women be escorted by a man. These women must be fully covered in public and if they are guilty, or in some areas thought to be guilty, of adultery they are to be stoned to death. To much of the Western world, the symbol of this oppression of women is the veil that women must wear to cover their face.

To some women the veil does represent this oppression, but in other areas women welcome the veil because they believe that it represents their own purity and dignity. In “modern” Islam communities such as Egypt and even America women continue to wear this veil and the dress that covers themselves in public. With this traditional dress they are believed to have individual freedom and modesty as opposed to being a sex object, as is seen in the Western world. The dress as opposition to sexual opposition shows opposition to the Western style of dress, and therefore rejecting major cultural and political infringements and being able to retain their own culture.

The Quran itself increased the status of women to a place much higher than it was in Arabia before Muhammad’s revelations, posing a question as to whether it is Islam’s oppression or the local customs. In the Quran, or Recitation, the Revelation, women no longer suffer as property, and women are granted rights such as controlling property, retaining their maiden names in marriage, and becoming legal citizens as opposed to property. Much like in Christianity with the story of Adam and Eve, men and women in Islam are thought of as being created in a pair. The Quran states that men and women in the eyes of God are equal and that they complete one another as a pair. Men and women must faithfully follow Islamic teaching along with the Five Pillars of Islam and are thought of as being complimentary to one another. Despite this, there are Muslim countries in which the status of women is shady.

Despite the presence of the status of women in the Quran, most Muslim societies have been and continue to be patriarchic societies. The Quran may have the recitations of the prophet Muhammad, but it is men who have been interpreting these passages. Men remain in power both politically and religiously, though modernists are beginning to open these passages and ideas up to interpretation. Mena re said in the Quran to have responsibility and “priority” over women, which causes some debate. This leads to the interpretation that men are to dominate women socioeconomically and that their responsibility is to take care of women, who do not have as high of a place in Muslim society as males (arguably), though the religious power of Islam is said to be based on faith and not a specific gender.

The Quran does, however, make an odd mention of women in relationship to their status with men. The Quran suggests that in the eyes of law as a “call to witness, from among your men, two witnesses. And if two men be not present then a man and two women.” This seems to suggest that the word and testimony of a man is double that of a woman, or more importantly interpreted, that a woman’s testimony is only half that of a man’s. Whatever the argument, the Quran’s depiction of women in this passage (2:282) seems out of place when taken into context with what the rest of the Quran seems to speak about the status of a woman, though the importance of these passages is that they are left up to interpretation by those who are in power, namely men. In many Islamic territories, men are allowed to marry and divorce as they please whereas women have much more restrictive freedoms when it comes to divorcing a man.

Muhammad himself had many wives and in his Recitation it is said that women should remain in their homes and avoid men they do not know as a sense of modesty, whereas the polygamous past of many Muslim countries does not seem to recognize the same modesty in men. In the Quran, however, these suggestions of remaining indoors seem to only apply to the wives of Muhammad himself, perhaps because of his elevated status, but fundamentalist Muslim men apply these passages to all Muslim women as a way to avoid temptation for men. This controversy is reflected in much of the Muslim world as there is little evidence of a uniform way to interpret the Quran outside of the clear Five Pillars of Islam. Afghanistan under the Taliban was highly patriarchal and a heavy source of oppression for women, whereas in places such as Egypt and Indonesia, which has the highest population of Muslims in the world, women have access to education and employment. Women are becoming rapidly more active in everyday Muslim life in these less conservative places.

Source:

Yvonne Haddad and John Esposito’s “Islam Gender and Social Change”

Akbar Ahmed’s “Women and Gender in Islam”